I think you might be jumping to conclusions. If you're an arsonist, it's pretty much guaranteed that you like fire. What profession is better than any other to get your fill of fire? If you like making bombs and think that becoming a TSA agent is going to get you in contact with a lot of bombs... Well friend, you're just the kind of idiot we like to hire!
Seriously, get into criminal justice and work your way onto a bomb squad. You'll see more bombs in your first year than you'll see in your entire career with the TSA.
They used to make you take your laptop out and turn it on to prove it wansn't a bomb. Proving of course either that it wasn't, or that they detonated it at the security gate instead of on the plane.
This was something I never quite understood. If you blow up a plane in flight you're killing what? 100-150 people MAX, and destroying a $375M plane? Even if your bomb is small enough to simply bring the plane down rather than vaporize it, the collateral damage on the ground is limited to maybe another 50-100 people and another $100M. But if you pop an explosive at a security checkpoint, and do significant structural damage to the terminal to cause a large scale collapse, you could potentially kill in excess of 500 people while likely causing less property damage (dollar wise).
There are only two reasons I see to explain this:
1) Liability. If a plane goes down and causes a bunch of damage, they probably don't want to be held responsible for that. Where-as if a terminal is blown up, they could disclaim liability claiming that the 'terrorist' detonated the bomb before they had a chance to counteract.
2) Money. Planes sure as hell are not cheap, and collateral damage when one goes down isn't likely to be either (a terrorist would be smart enough to look out a window and choose a prime time to detonate for maximum damage.)
Which leaves us at a conclusion that we already reached. It's not about the people, it's about the money. If it were about the people, they wouldn't have moved the security risk from the plane to the checkpoint where there are significantly more people to kill. But then again who among us is really surprised that the government and the airlines are more beholden to money than people?
In the absence of government [...] there is no difference between right & wrong
I blame idiots like you for the plague on this planet that is organized religion. The mindset that right and wrong have to be dictated from some higher power, be it government, or some god, is just so fundamentally flawed it's appaling. How little must a person think of themselves that they give no weight to their own opinions and common sense that they must look to someone else for guidance? Nothing more than children running around masquerading as adults, always looking to Mommy and Daddy to make their decisions for them. Mommy can I take that other boy's baseball? Daddy can I knock over that little girl's sand castle? No. Put yourself in their shoes. Would like that little boy to come over and take away your tonka trucks? Would you like that little girl to come over and smash your Lego house? If the answer is no, then it's wrong and don't do it.
But then again I guess if people could actually think for themselves, religion wouldn't have taken a foothold to begin with. I guess I'm expecting too much for sheep to behave like humans.
Just because Miriam-Webster and the other dictionary/English language bigwigs decide to add a new word or definition of an existing word on the basis that it has become commonly used, does not mean that the word is a real word or that the word means what they say it does. (Cue raving dissent from overzealous English majors.) The purpose of a language is to communicate and the purpose of a dictionary is facilitate that communication. If there is a word, or a definition of a word that is in common use, it is absolutely essential that the word or definition be added to the language officially, and added to dictionaries so that people who are ignorant to it may have the opportunity to learn.
Does this mean that a word or definition deserves to exist as it does? Not by a long shot. We as humans are flawed creatures, and as such tend to make very poor decisions on a quite regular basis. We as humans are also, in general, stupid sheep. All it takes is one person making up a word, or using it in a new way, that catches the attention and hearts of the majority, and guess what? Everyone will start using it. Sensationalizing copyright infringement by calling it piracy certainly garners attention, be it good or bad. Mass media has helped to perpetuate the situation by using it sensationally to gain more readership. Thus piracy as a term to refer to copyright infringement stuck. Being in common use, it is only right to add it to a dictionary so that the uninformed may become informed.
Perhaps dictionaries need to start bearing a bold red ledger warning the reader of its contents. A dictionary is a collection of abstract concepts paired with the meanings commonly associated with those concepts by speakers of the language of the dictionary. It is by no means the end all be all of the definition of what something is. If it were, every word would have exactly one and only one definition, and we would have the full expected quarter-million words in our language instead of the current hundred-seventy-thousand or so.
Our world exists of nothing but abstracts; words are how humans assign value and meaning to those abstracts in order to communicate those concepts to others. Nothing more, nothing less. Copyright infringement is only associated with piracy because humans decided to accept that association for the basis of communication. Learn to think for yourself and stop letting yourself be influenced by mass media and large corporations.
And in the Computer Science community, modulo is used formally to indicate the operation that gives you the remainder C when A is divided by B. Given that this is a mathematical operation, I find it silly that the mathematical community would use it to refer to "give or take" rather than a remainder operation. Not to say you're wrong, just that I find it silly. Damnable English language.
Point of all this silliness is that you can hose your 'puter no matter what the OS is just it is one heck of a lot easier to re- install a linux distro than to install Windows or Mac OS for that matter.
Lacking experience with Mac OS I do not speak for it. However regarding optimized installs (Silent installs using scripts to select all options beforehand and remove user interaction) Windows 7 will install on my home machine in about 20 minutes and Random Linux Distro in 15-20. If you really need that 5 minutes, you probably should have made images and restored from those instead of reinstalling in the first place. I'll concede that Windows played 2nd fiddle to other OSes with regard to install time for pretty much all of recent history, but Microsoft has made great strides in making it much much much faster than it used to be. Saying that Linux is "a heck of a lot easier" to reinstall now simply isn't true.
"I am going to f up your shit" and "I am going to f you up"
That is assault and is very much a criminal matter. If the police did not press charges they are guilty of deriliction of duty. You have a very real case with two very solid legs to stand on, both against the people that assaulted you, and the police themselves.
IANAL, but friend it sounds like in your case (Landlord) you would do well to better educate yourself of the laws you have on your side (since assault is probably not that uncommon against Landlords) and if you can afford it, keeping a lawyer on retainer.
Best of luck to you getting those assholes out of your life.
I think this depends wholly upon where you live and what the composition is of your lawn. I grew up in Ohio and unless there was a really dry August, the rain always kept the grass plenty watered. And if not, so what? Unless you have a really fragile breed of grass on your lawn, it's only going to go dormant until it rains again. Fertilizing (in my experience) is unnecessary too. My father would always fertilize and the spring and then bitch that he had to mow 3 times a week to keep up... Um yeah Dad, I think the fertilizer was unnecessary... Pesticides I can see, grubworms and other pests can really destroy a lawn if left to it. Oil I can understand if you're talking about motor oil, and gasoline derived from crude oil; an electric mower for a lawn that size wouldn't likely be very practical. The waste of land depends on what you're doing with it. Hopefully you're maintaining it so it is soft and safe for kids to play on, and not out of some twisted sense of pride.
So while I mostly agree with you, I have to point out that maintaining five acres of lawn isn't necessarily as wasteful as you might think under varying circumstances. If you're totally anal about your lawn, sure, you could spend thousands of dollars maintaining it each year. But then again some people waste thousands of dollars each year on other things that make them happy. Different strokes. But I'm pretty sure in many people's situations you could maintain a lawn that size for a couple hundred dollars a year, if you did your research and weren't super picky about the results.
Google already has an unsafe search option. It's called "SafeSearch Off". What I think you meant to say was that you'd like to see a search that returns only the results that would be filtered by the SafeSearch option. In that case you want something like http://www.askjoline.com/. I'm pretty sure that's the site; shooting from memory here, and I'm at work so I can't verify.
Skyrim will be the game to usher in a new spec for monitors. We have contrast ratios stating just how 'black' black can be displayed, now we're going to need one for white too!
Check out the Better Bodies mod as well. You don't have to go with the full nude models (I do for the realism, and the fact that I'm a skeezy perv) but the models the mods community developed are so far above and beyond the stock BethSoft models it's almost sickening. I realize of course they need to sell copies to people with crapier computers, but the Better Bodies mod with max resolution skins only cost about 2-3 FPS IIRC. It will greatly enrich your experience to have people actually look like people instead of frightening jaggy-monsters.
Check out a stock clothing/armor replacement mod too. Having prettier NPC is a bit ruined when their clothes don't line up with their bodies quite right anymore.
I know I'm just arguing semantics here, but I would consider that more 'creative use of game mechanics' than 'exploiting'. It's not like the developers explicitly tried to prevent you from combining certain abilities in game breaking ways and left in a loophole on accident. They gave you the tools and the free will to use them how you saw fit. Using them in a way that breaks the game is a conscious decision you as a player have to make or refuse to make. Blocking access with a cheat code only adds a small barrier to use that won't stop anyone from actually using them. At best, all it does is stop you from accidentally making yourself a demi-god. I say accidentally, because anything that is gamebreaking has to be obvious to the casual observer; it would take a lot of not paying attention to what's going on to stuble ass-backwards into being unkillable.
Don't take this as a slight, but the statement "I would just prefer things like that be enabled through a cheat code or something" makes it sound as though you simply lack the willpower to resist the temptation to stick your hand in the cookie jar. I can understand that to a point as I used to be terrible at games when I was younger and would cheat my way through pretty much as much as I could. Once I became skillful enough to actually beat games without cheating I found I got even more mileage out of games as I could simply go back and cheat all I wanted to simply have more 'value added' fun. I did this with Oblivion. I beat the main campaign and all the side missions with probably 3 different characters before I started cheating, item hacking, etc.
Bottom line, put a little effort into developing your willpower to resist the urge to cheat. You'll practically double your mileage out of any decent game.
Number of times Steam DRM has caused me problems or prevented me from doing whatever the hell I wanted to do with a game: 0.....This is why people love Steam.
Allow me to set up an analogy for you. Let's say you like the Jewish people just as much as you like games. Now let's say DRM of any kind is evil, not unlike a certain mustachioed Austrian that lived in the earlier part of the 20th century.
So your argument now becomes: Number of times Hitler has caused me problems or prevented me from having personal relationships with Jewish people: 0. This is why people love Hitler.
Nevermind that Hitler is running around killing other Jews, no no, as long as he's not on your doorstep asking why you're serving Gefilte Fish and Matzah bread to your guests, everything is Kosher (pun intended.)
Of course, I'm sensationalizing to get my point across. Of course DRM isn't as evil as Hitler. Still evil, sure, but not even in the same league, let alone the same ballpark. My point though is that some anecdotal evidence from a few users does not exonerate Steam DRM. Just because it is non-intrusive now does not guarantee that it will remain as such. It sets the framework for controls to be tightened until it is just as invasive and obtrusive as the other implementations of DRM out there right now. Where does this leave you? With the proverbial buyer's remorse, and a library full of games you now have to jump through hoops to play. And what if Steam ever closes it's doors? You're now left with lots of software that you can no longer use (barring offline mode, supposing the computer you have it installed on never tanks.) I know some people are okay with this, and with the low price tags associated with most games over Steam, I probably would be too. But I cannot get on board with Steam simply on principle. I cannot in good conscience allow my hard earned money to go towards supporting the broken-business-model-prop that is DRM. There are plenty of other publishers and independent developers out there that do not feel the need to saddle their software with DRM that are producing quality games I can use to fill my free time. It's those people I am more than happy to support, even at a higher price point.
tl;dr: Don't support the monster that you cannot control.;-)
What that means is that a DIDO system would have to be used on currently unused or completely reclaimed spectrum.
Sounds to me like this would make it trivial to design cell blockers for say, Theatres, Libraries, Museums, etc. Or even for someone to make an even lower powered one to shut up that asshole sitting behind you in a restaurant blabbing at 80db who just won't shut the fuck up. Obviously they'd be illegal for personal use, but damn they'd be satisfying to use at times...
Seems kind of dumb to kill all the customers of a competing company. Those are paying customers you'd much rather have for yourself; dead men pay no bills. I'd hire the hacker to limit the head 'splosions to the people actually running the competitor. Then when the competitor collapses due to having no more employees, where are all the people needing cell service going to turn? That's right.
So no cause for alarm here, people... Unless you happen to work for a telco that is...
Sorry but are you trolling? Seems like the viewpoint of not forcing your kids to do something is more communist or socialist than what I support. My stance on this topic is conservative, which leans more towards dictatorship (forcing people to do things against their will) if you try to exaggerate things as you are apparently trying to do.
Don't get me wrong, I don't support government mandated action in almost all circumstances. I fully oppose seat-belt laws. But there's a difference between the two. With seat-belt laws, I am only responsible for myself. Unless you are driving in excess of 100 MPH, there is no way you will crash through your windshield with sufficient force to injure anyone but yourself. The government has no place creating laws that protect us from ourselves. With truancy laws, the parents are responsible for someone not themselves, their children. Children deserve an education growing up, and society deserves to have new members added to it that aren't useless and ignorant. Truancy laws help protect others from the shortcomings of parents. Here, government mandated action is completely warranted.
And not for nothing friend, but the system does provide a way for you to legally remove your child from the system if they do not want to go. But there is a compromise to be made. Either you must take it upon yourself to teach them at home, or they must be old enough to start working. So the answer here is not to buck the system. Bucking the system just turns you into a non-conformist that refuses to play the game everyone else is already playing simply because they don't like the rules. The government really doesn't "force" your children to go to school, they force your children to get an education so that they can become a productive member of society, rather than a drain on public resources via welfare because they are ignorant and unemployable.
Would you like to take the time to teach your children yourself? Would you like your children to live on welfare for the rest of their lives because you never taught them personal responsibility and didn't endeavor to get them an education? Then make your kids go to school. A parent's job is not to be a friend to their kid, it's to be their parent. They'll thank you when they're older.
Parents should put in a "best effort" to raise a child that does what they are told (go to school) rather than does whatever the hell they want. While it is true that parents cannot possibly watch their children 24 hours a day when school is involved, it is still their responsibility to raise a child that doesn't have to be watched 24 hours a day. If parents do their due diligence by punishing the child when they are found truant, then you really can't punish them for having a kid that won't fucking listen. (Note I said parents get in trouble for it, not that they are necessarily punished for it.) As long as the parents do their job and try to correct the child's behavior, they cannot be seen at fault. Self-same, the schools should be getting repremanded for not keeping of track of kids that skip out while under their watch as well.
I fully respect that some kids just cannot be reached. Those are the kids that are truant time and time again despite any escalating punishments they may incur. However, in my not so humble opinion, if parents do their job of raising their child properly from birth, then you are only going to have a very small set of fringe cases where the child is still unruly. Those would tend to be cases where the child actually has psychological or emotional problems. In these cases it is rather understood that no matter how hard anyone tries, the kid is going to be unruly, and no-one is really to blame.
The sad part is that many parents anymore (in the US at least) do not seem to want to spend the time to raise their child properly. I understand that some people may have very busy schedules that prevent them from spending as much time with them as they should. But if that is your situation, are you really sure that you are at a place in your life that kids are a good idea? It is simply irresponsible to have kids when you "want" them, rather than when you are actually able to raise them. If you don't have the time to devote to properly raising a child, then don't have one; it isn't fair to the child, and we certainly don't need more people in this country that grow up to be complete assholes because their parents were never around, or never paid attention to them.
Irresponsible parents raise irresponsible kids. Such irresponsibility should not go unchecked.
My examples were rather generalized to simply illustrate a point, answering the question you asked. I'll try to explain how I think my explanation fits the situation. From what I understand, Google does have a rather extensive patent portfolio. They simply opted to try to obtain the aforementioned set of patents solely, rather than chip in with the other three. To my mind this puts them in situation two; a list of patents they could potentially use to stave off lawsuits by threat of counter-suit. The point isn't for Google to own the patents they need to defend themselves, it's having other patents to fight back with in case you do get sued. Let me try to set up an analogy for you.
Had Google chipped in with the other three, they would have effectively purchased a shield for themselves. However in this case it wouldn't have formed a particularly effective shield as all of your opponents would be co-owners of said shield. Had they acquired them solely, they would have purchased both a shield and a sword. But Google doesn't really need another sword, as they already have a decent one in the form of their existing patents. The only difference is that they would have had a more effective sword had they won the patents themselves.
So yes, I agree, Google doesn't have a good offense without those patents, but they also aren't defenseless (offenseless?) either. So I would say that situation two still fits, only that now instead of punching the bully, you're slapping him. Which only works if the bully is a wimp. Are Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle wimps? Probably not, but neither is Google. We'll just have to wait and see how it all pans out.
It is, but it is hardly ever prosecuted except in cases where it is a repetitive problem. Also, it is usually the parents that get in trouble for it. Which is the way it should be. If you can't be responsible for your kids, don't have them in the first place. Only in cases where parents can prove due diligence are when the kids are actually punished, usually with juvenile detention.
Disclaimer: This is all from personal experience (I was a good kid, but knew others that weren't), so as always YMMV.
I'll explain to you why I think that yes, it is better to be able to sue than it is to be able to defend yourself when sued. Remember, it is not possible to be "not able to be sued"; anyone can sue you for any reason they wish, the variable is how far that suit against you makes it.
Consider the situation where you own lots of patents in the hope of not being sued. You own patents on nearly everything your product contains, and anything else you did due diligence and couldn't find any existing patents you could see yourself infringing upon. Now some other company sees your product and cries foul, suing you for patent infringement. Since you only hold what you considered the minimum number of required patents to be "safe" you have no patents that your accuser could be infringing upon. Thus your accuser has no fear of counter-suit, and you have to spend money on lawyers defending your stance.
Consider now situation two, where you own a rather diverse patent portfolio covering a great many things related to and unrelated to whatever products you may be producing. Now you have a much greater chance that if someone else sues you for infringing on their patent, that you have something in your portfolio that they may be guilty of infringing. If you stand a reasonable chance of filing a counter-suit against them, your accuser may not bother in the first place.
No MBA required to understand which one wins out, it's simply psychology. Bullying 101. If you've ever known a bully, you'll know that they always pick on the person that doesn't (or can't) fight back. Sock that bully in the nose just one time (and even though you may get your ass beat at the time) the bully leaves you alone from then on. The risk isn't worth the reward, and the bully moves on to someone else who won't fight back.
So that is why it is better to be able to sue, than it is to be "safe" from being sued. Just another instance of the best defense being a good offense.
A judge will look at distances on the scale within a home and presume "normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances". A judge will look at distances on a much larger scale and presume "publicly".
Emphasis mine.
Am I the only one concerned that we have judges presiding over cases in which they are ignorant of the topic at hand? Seems like we should refine the system to have judges that are experts in the subject matter of the case over which they are presiding if we have any hope of this country not turning to shit (more-so than it has already) in the next 25-50 years.
Point the heatsink directly at the Sun. This has two benefits:
1) Less sunlight is directly striking the surface of the planet, helping with the cooling.
2) The Earth is slowly pushed into a wider orbit making the planet slightly cooler.
So number one gives you a nice short term resolution, while number two gives you a permanent solution. First calculate the equilibrium point where the heat we're producing on the planet balances the amount the planet can passively radiate into space while leaving the planet at an acceptable temperature. Then calculate the acceleration of the Earth away from the Sun caused by the heatsink, and when the Earth hits the midpoint, flip the heatsink to point directly away from the Sun to slow and eventually stop the outward motion of the planet. Once we reach the equilibrium point, detach the heatsink. If things start falling out of balance again, use the heatsink to adjust the orbital distance from the Sun in whatever direction is necessary.
It might not be the easiest thing to pull off, but I'm sure scientists far more intelligent than I could make it work. The question is only how long before we have the means to put a device such as this in place. My guess is: Nowhere near to soon enough.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you might be jumping to conclusions. If you're an arsonist, it's pretty much guaranteed that you like fire. What profession is better than any other to get your fill of fire? If you like making bombs and think that becoming a TSA agent is going to get you in contact with a lot of bombs... Well friend, you're just the kind of idiot we like to hire!
Seriously, get into criminal justice and work your way onto a bomb squad. You'll see more bombs in your first year than you'll see in your entire career with the TSA.
Yami
They used to make you take your laptop out and turn it on to prove it wansn't a bomb. Proving of course either that it wasn't, or that they detonated it at the security gate instead of on the plane.
This was something I never quite understood. If you blow up a plane in flight you're killing what? 100-150 people MAX, and destroying a $375M plane? Even if your bomb is small enough to simply bring the plane down rather than vaporize it, the collateral damage on the ground is limited to maybe another 50-100 people and another $100M. But if you pop an explosive at a security checkpoint, and do significant structural damage to the terminal to cause a large scale collapse, you could potentially kill in excess of 500 people while likely causing less property damage (dollar wise).
There are only two reasons I see to explain this:
1) Liability. If a plane goes down and causes a bunch of damage, they probably don't want to be held responsible for that. Where-as if a terminal is blown up, they could disclaim liability claiming that the 'terrorist' detonated the bomb before they had a chance to counteract.
2) Money. Planes sure as hell are not cheap, and collateral damage when one goes down isn't likely to be either (a terrorist would be smart enough to look out a window and choose a prime time to detonate for maximum damage.)
Which leaves us at a conclusion that we already reached. It's not about the people, it's about the money. If it were about the people, they wouldn't have moved the security risk from the plane to the checkpoint where there are significantly more people to kill. But then again who among us is really surprised that the government and the airlines are more beholden to money than people?
Yami
In the absence of government [...] there is no difference between right & wrong
I blame idiots like you for the plague on this planet that is organized religion. The mindset that right and wrong have to be dictated from some higher power, be it government, or some god, is just so fundamentally flawed it's appaling. How little must a person think of themselves that they give no weight to their own opinions and common sense that they must look to someone else for guidance? Nothing more than children running around masquerading as adults, always looking to Mommy and Daddy to make their decisions for them. Mommy can I take that other boy's baseball? Daddy can I knock over that little girl's sand castle? No. Put yourself in their shoes. Would like that little boy to come over and take away your tonka trucks? Would you like that little girl to come over and smash your Lego house? If the answer is no, then it's wrong and don't do it.
But then again I guess if people could actually think for themselves, religion wouldn't have taken a foothold to begin with. I guess I'm expecting too much for sheep to behave like humans.
Yami
Just because Miriam-Webster and the other dictionary/English language bigwigs decide to add a new word or definition of an existing word on the basis that it has become commonly used, does not mean that the word is a real word or that the word means what they say it does. (Cue raving dissent from overzealous English majors.) The purpose of a language is to communicate and the purpose of a dictionary is facilitate that communication. If there is a word, or a definition of a word that is in common use, it is absolutely essential that the word or definition be added to the language officially, and added to dictionaries so that people who are ignorant to it may have the opportunity to learn.
Does this mean that a word or definition deserves to exist as it does? Not by a long shot. We as humans are flawed creatures, and as such tend to make very poor decisions on a quite regular basis. We as humans are also, in general, stupid sheep. All it takes is one person making up a word, or using it in a new way, that catches the attention and hearts of the majority, and guess what? Everyone will start using it. Sensationalizing copyright infringement by calling it piracy certainly garners attention, be it good or bad. Mass media has helped to perpetuate the situation by using it sensationally to gain more readership. Thus piracy as a term to refer to copyright infringement stuck. Being in common use, it is only right to add it to a dictionary so that the uninformed may become informed.
Perhaps dictionaries need to start bearing a bold red ledger warning the reader of its contents. A dictionary is a collection of abstract concepts paired with the meanings commonly associated with those concepts by speakers of the language of the dictionary. It is by no means the end all be all of the definition of what something is. If it were, every word would have exactly one and only one definition, and we would have the full expected quarter-million words in our language instead of the current hundred-seventy-thousand or so.
Our world exists of nothing but abstracts; words are how humans assign value and meaning to those abstracts in order to communicate those concepts to others. Nothing more, nothing less. Copyright infringement is only associated with piracy because humans decided to accept that association for the basis of communication. Learn to think for yourself and stop letting yourself be influenced by mass media and large corporations.
Yami
And in the Computer Science community, modulo is used formally to indicate the operation that gives you the remainder C when A is divided by B. Given that this is a mathematical operation, I find it silly that the mathematical community would use it to refer to "give or take" rather than a remainder operation. Not to say you're wrong, just that I find it silly. Damnable English language.
Yami
The user. At least once Apple approves my mind control app that is.
Come to think of it, if they haven't approved it yet it must not be working. BLAST!
Yami
Point of all this silliness is that you can hose your 'puter no matter what the OS is just it is one heck of a lot easier to re- install a linux distro than to install Windows or Mac OS for that matter.
Lacking experience with Mac OS I do not speak for it. However regarding optimized installs (Silent installs using scripts to select all options beforehand and remove user interaction) Windows 7 will install on my home machine in about 20 minutes and Random Linux Distro in 15-20. If you really need that 5 minutes, you probably should have made images and restored from those instead of reinstalling in the first place. I'll concede that Windows played 2nd fiddle to other OSes with regard to install time for pretty much all of recent history, but Microsoft has made great strides in making it much much much faster than it used to be. Saying that Linux is "a heck of a lot easier" to reinstall now simply isn't true.
Yami
Darling Daughter would stay home and watch over Sick Mother if she was really that concerned. ~
Yami
"I am going to f up your shit" and "I am going to f you up"
That is assault and is very much a criminal matter. If the police did not press charges they are guilty of deriliction of duty. You have a very real case with two very solid legs to stand on, both against the people that assaulted you, and the police themselves.
IANAL, but friend it sounds like in your case (Landlord) you would do well to better educate yourself of the laws you have on your side (since assault is probably not that uncommon against Landlords) and if you can afford it, keeping a lawyer on retainer.
Best of luck to you getting those assholes out of your life.
Yami
I think this depends wholly upon where you live and what the composition is of your lawn. I grew up in Ohio and unless there was a really dry August, the rain always kept the grass plenty watered. And if not, so what? Unless you have a really fragile breed of grass on your lawn, it's only going to go dormant until it rains again. Fertilizing (in my experience) is unnecessary too. My father would always fertilize and the spring and then bitch that he had to mow 3 times a week to keep up... Um yeah Dad, I think the fertilizer was unnecessary... Pesticides I can see, grubworms and other pests can really destroy a lawn if left to it. Oil I can understand if you're talking about motor oil, and gasoline derived from crude oil; an electric mower for a lawn that size wouldn't likely be very practical. The waste of land depends on what you're doing with it. Hopefully you're maintaining it so it is soft and safe for kids to play on, and not out of some twisted sense of pride.
So while I mostly agree with you, I have to point out that maintaining five acres of lawn isn't necessarily as wasteful as you might think under varying circumstances. If you're totally anal about your lawn, sure, you could spend thousands of dollars maintaining it each year. But then again some people waste thousands of dollars each year on other things that make them happy. Different strokes. But I'm pretty sure in many people's situations you could maintain a lawn that size for a couple hundred dollars a year, if you did your research and weren't super picky about the results.
Yami
Google already has an unsafe search option. It's called "SafeSearch Off". What I think you meant to say was that you'd like to see a search that returns only the results that would be filtered by the SafeSearch option. In that case you want something like http://www.askjoline.com/. I'm pretty sure that's the site; shooting from memory here, and I'm at work so I can't verify.
Skyrim will be the game to usher in a new spec for monitors. We have contrast ratios stating just how 'black' black can be displayed, now we're going to need one for white too!
Yami
Check out the Better Bodies mod as well. You don't have to go with the full nude models (I do for the realism, and the fact that I'm a skeezy perv) but the models the mods community developed are so far above and beyond the stock BethSoft models it's almost sickening. I realize of course they need to sell copies to people with crapier computers, but the Better Bodies mod with max resolution skins only cost about 2-3 FPS IIRC. It will greatly enrich your experience to have people actually look like people instead of frightening jaggy-monsters.
Check out a stock clothing/armor replacement mod too. Having prettier NPC is a bit ruined when their clothes don't line up with their bodies quite right anymore.
Yami
I know I'm just arguing semantics here, but I would consider that more 'creative use of game mechanics' than 'exploiting'. It's not like the developers explicitly tried to prevent you from combining certain abilities in game breaking ways and left in a loophole on accident. They gave you the tools and the free will to use them how you saw fit. Using them in a way that breaks the game is a conscious decision you as a player have to make or refuse to make. Blocking access with a cheat code only adds a small barrier to use that won't stop anyone from actually using them. At best, all it does is stop you from accidentally making yourself a demi-god. I say accidentally, because anything that is gamebreaking has to be obvious to the casual observer; it would take a lot of not paying attention to what's going on to stuble ass-backwards into being unkillable.
Don't take this as a slight, but the statement "I would just prefer things like that be enabled through a cheat code or something" makes it sound as though you simply lack the willpower to resist the temptation to stick your hand in the cookie jar. I can understand that to a point as I used to be terrible at games when I was younger and would cheat my way through pretty much as much as I could. Once I became skillful enough to actually beat games without cheating I found I got even more mileage out of games as I could simply go back and cheat all I wanted to simply have more 'value added' fun. I did this with Oblivion. I beat the main campaign and all the side missions with probably 3 different characters before I started cheating, item hacking, etc.
Bottom line, put a little effort into developing your willpower to resist the urge to cheat. You'll practically double your mileage out of any decent game.
Yami
Number of times Steam DRM has caused me problems or prevented me from doing whatever the hell I wanted to do with a game: 0.....This is why people love Steam.
Allow me to set up an analogy for you. Let's say you like the Jewish people just as much as you like games. Now let's say DRM of any kind is evil, not unlike a certain mustachioed Austrian that lived in the earlier part of the 20th century.
;-)
So your argument now becomes: Number of times Hitler has caused me problems or prevented me from having personal relationships with Jewish people: 0. This is why people love Hitler.
Nevermind that Hitler is running around killing other Jews, no no, as long as he's not on your doorstep asking why you're serving Gefilte Fish and Matzah bread to your guests, everything is Kosher (pun intended.)
Of course, I'm sensationalizing to get my point across. Of course DRM isn't as evil as Hitler. Still evil, sure, but not even in the same league, let alone the same ballpark. My point though is that some anecdotal evidence from a few users does not exonerate Steam DRM. Just because it is non-intrusive now does not guarantee that it will remain as such. It sets the framework for controls to be tightened until it is just as invasive and obtrusive as the other implementations of DRM out there right now. Where does this leave you? With the proverbial buyer's remorse, and a library full of games you now have to jump through hoops to play. And what if Steam ever closes it's doors? You're now left with lots of software that you can no longer use (barring offline mode, supposing the computer you have it installed on never tanks.) I know some people are okay with this, and with the low price tags associated with most games over Steam, I probably would be too. But I cannot get on board with Steam simply on principle. I cannot in good conscience allow my hard earned money to go towards supporting the broken-business-model-prop that is DRM. There are plenty of other publishers and independent developers out there that do not feel the need to saddle their software with DRM that are producing quality games I can use to fill my free time. It's those people I am more than happy to support, even at a higher price point.
tl;dr: Don't support the monster that you cannot control.
What that means is that a DIDO system would have to be used on currently unused or completely reclaimed spectrum.
Sounds to me like this would make it trivial to design cell blockers for say, Theatres, Libraries, Museums, etc. Or even for someone to make an even lower powered one to shut up that asshole sitting behind you in a restaurant blabbing at 80db who just won't shut the fuck up. Obviously they'd be illegal for personal use, but damn they'd be satisfying to use at times...
Seems kind of dumb to kill all the customers of a competing company. Those are paying customers you'd much rather have for yourself; dead men pay no bills. I'd hire the hacker to limit the head 'splosions to the people actually running the competitor. Then when the competitor collapses due to having no more employees, where are all the people needing cell service going to turn? That's right.
So no cause for alarm here, people... Unless you happen to work for a telco that is...
Sorry but are you trolling? Seems like the viewpoint of not forcing your kids to do something is more communist or socialist than what I support. My stance on this topic is conservative, which leans more towards dictatorship (forcing people to do things against their will) if you try to exaggerate things as you are apparently trying to do.
Don't get me wrong, I don't support government mandated action in almost all circumstances. I fully oppose seat-belt laws. But there's a difference between the two. With seat-belt laws, I am only responsible for myself. Unless you are driving in excess of 100 MPH, there is no way you will crash through your windshield with sufficient force to injure anyone but yourself. The government has no place creating laws that protect us from ourselves. With truancy laws, the parents are responsible for someone not themselves, their children. Children deserve an education growing up, and society deserves to have new members added to it that aren't useless and ignorant. Truancy laws help protect others from the shortcomings of parents. Here, government mandated action is completely warranted.
And not for nothing friend, but the system does provide a way for you to legally remove your child from the system if they do not want to go. But there is a compromise to be made. Either you must take it upon yourself to teach them at home, or they must be old enough to start working. So the answer here is not to buck the system. Bucking the system just turns you into a non-conformist that refuses to play the game everyone else is already playing simply because they don't like the rules. The government really doesn't "force" your children to go to school, they force your children to get an education so that they can become a productive member of society, rather than a drain on public resources via welfare because they are ignorant and unemployable.
Would you like to take the time to teach your children yourself? Would you like your children to live on welfare for the rest of their lives because you never taught them personal responsibility and didn't endeavor to get them an education? Then make your kids go to school. A parent's job is not to be a friend to their kid, it's to be their parent. They'll thank you when they're older.
Sorry, what now? I was distracted.
Parents should put in a "best effort" to raise a child that does what they are told (go to school) rather than does whatever the hell they want. While it is true that parents cannot possibly watch their children 24 hours a day when school is involved, it is still their responsibility to raise a child that doesn't have to be watched 24 hours a day. If parents do their due diligence by punishing the child when they are found truant, then you really can't punish them for having a kid that won't fucking listen. (Note I said parents get in trouble for it, not that they are necessarily punished for it.) As long as the parents do their job and try to correct the child's behavior, they cannot be seen at fault. Self-same, the schools should be getting repremanded for not keeping of track of kids that skip out while under their watch as well.
I fully respect that some kids just cannot be reached. Those are the kids that are truant time and time again despite any escalating punishments they may incur. However, in my not so humble opinion, if parents do their job of raising their child properly from birth, then you are only going to have a very small set of fringe cases where the child is still unruly. Those would tend to be cases where the child actually has psychological or emotional problems. In these cases it is rather understood that no matter how hard anyone tries, the kid is going to be unruly, and no-one is really to blame.
The sad part is that many parents anymore (in the US at least) do not seem to want to spend the time to raise their child properly. I understand that some people may have very busy schedules that prevent them from spending as much time with them as they should. But if that is your situation, are you really sure that you are at a place in your life that kids are a good idea? It is simply irresponsible to have kids when you "want" them, rather than when you are actually able to raise them. If you don't have the time to devote to properly raising a child, then don't have one; it isn't fair to the child, and we certainly don't need more people in this country that grow up to be complete assholes because their parents were never around, or never paid attention to them.
Irresponsible parents raise irresponsible kids. Such irresponsibility should not go unchecked.
My examples were rather generalized to simply illustrate a point, answering the question you asked. I'll try to explain how I think my explanation fits the situation. From what I understand, Google does have a rather extensive patent portfolio. They simply opted to try to obtain the aforementioned set of patents solely, rather than chip in with the other three. To my mind this puts them in situation two; a list of patents they could potentially use to stave off lawsuits by threat of counter-suit. The point isn't for Google to own the patents they need to defend themselves, it's having other patents to fight back with in case you do get sued. Let me try to set up an analogy for you.
Had Google chipped in with the other three, they would have effectively purchased a shield for themselves. However in this case it wouldn't have formed a particularly effective shield as all of your opponents would be co-owners of said shield. Had they acquired them solely, they would have purchased both a shield and a sword. But Google doesn't really need another sword, as they already have a decent one in the form of their existing patents. The only difference is that they would have had a more effective sword had they won the patents themselves.
So yes, I agree, Google doesn't have a good offense without those patents, but they also aren't defenseless (offenseless?) either. So I would say that situation two still fits, only that now instead of punching the bully, you're slapping him. Which only works if the bully is a wimp. Are Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle wimps? Probably not, but neither is Google. We'll just have to wait and see how it all pans out.
It is, but it is hardly ever prosecuted except in cases where it is a repetitive problem. Also, it is usually the parents that get in trouble for it. Which is the way it should be. If you can't be responsible for your kids, don't have them in the first place. Only in cases where parents can prove due diligence are when the kids are actually punished, usually with juvenile detention.
Disclaimer: This is all from personal experience (I was a good kid, but knew others that weren't), so as always YMMV.
I'll explain to you why I think that yes, it is better to be able to sue than it is to be able to defend yourself when sued. Remember, it is not possible to be "not able to be sued"; anyone can sue you for any reason they wish, the variable is how far that suit against you makes it.
Consider the situation where you own lots of patents in the hope of not being sued. You own patents on nearly everything your product contains, and anything else you did due diligence and couldn't find any existing patents you could see yourself infringing upon. Now some other company sees your product and cries foul, suing you for patent infringement. Since you only hold what you considered the minimum number of required patents to be "safe" you have no patents that your accuser could be infringing upon. Thus your accuser has no fear of counter-suit, and you have to spend money on lawyers defending your stance.
Consider now situation two, where you own a rather diverse patent portfolio covering a great many things related to and unrelated to whatever products you may be producing. Now you have a much greater chance that if someone else sues you for infringing on their patent, that you have something in your portfolio that they may be guilty of infringing. If you stand a reasonable chance of filing a counter-suit against them, your accuser may not bother in the first place.
No MBA required to understand which one wins out, it's simply psychology. Bullying 101. If you've ever known a bully, you'll know that they always pick on the person that doesn't (or can't) fight back. Sock that bully in the nose just one time (and even though you may get your ass beat at the time) the bully leaves you alone from then on. The risk isn't worth the reward, and the bully moves on to someone else who won't fight back.
So that is why it is better to be able to sue, than it is to be "safe" from being sued. Just another instance of the best defense being a good offense.
A judge will look at distances on the scale within a home and presume "normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances". A judge will look at distances on a much larger scale and presume "publicly".
Emphasis mine.
Am I the only one concerned that we have judges presiding over cases in which they are ignorant of the topic at hand? Seems like we should refine the system to have judges that are experts in the subject matter of the case over which they are presiding if we have any hope of this country not turning to shit (more-so than it has already) in the next 25-50 years.
Point the heatsink directly at the Sun. This has two benefits:
1) Less sunlight is directly striking the surface of the planet, helping with the cooling.
2) The Earth is slowly pushed into a wider orbit making the planet slightly cooler.
So number one gives you a nice short term resolution, while number two gives you a permanent solution. First calculate the equilibrium point where the heat we're producing on the planet balances the amount the planet can passively radiate into space while leaving the planet at an acceptable temperature. Then calculate the acceleration of the Earth away from the Sun caused by the heatsink, and when the Earth hits the midpoint, flip the heatsink to point directly away from the Sun to slow and eventually stop the outward motion of the planet. Once we reach the equilibrium point, detach the heatsink. If things start falling out of balance again, use the heatsink to adjust the orbital distance from the Sun in whatever direction is necessary.
It might not be the easiest thing to pull off, but I'm sure scientists far more intelligent than I could make it work. The question is only how long before we have the means to put a device such as this in place. My guess is: Nowhere near to soon enough.